Trudeau: Conservatives don’t get gender equality
TORONTO — The strongest opposition to including issues such as gender equality in discussions over the North American Free Trade Agreement has come not from the United States but from within Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday.
Speaking during a question-andanswer session at the first Toronto edition of the Women in the World conference, the prime minister said his government has faced hurdles in adding a gender chapter to NAFTA as it did in a free trade deal with Chile.
“The pushback we’re getting is actually not from south of the border. The pushback we’re getting is from Canadian Conservatives, who said: ‘Oh no, this is about economics, it’s about jobs … it’s not about rhetorical flourishes of being good on environment or being good on gender,’ ” Trudeau said.
“To see that there is a supposedly responsible political party out there that still doesn’t get that gender equality is a fundamental economic issue as well as many other things, that environmental responsibility is fundamentally an economic issue, highlights that we do have a lot of work still to do in Canada.”
The Conservative party said it had no comment.
Trudeau has positioned himself as a champion of gender equality since taking office, when he explained his decision to appoint a half-female cabinet with the headline-grabbing quip: “Because it’s 2015.”
But he told the conference Monday that despite his government’s efforts to bolster the ranks of women in politics, retention has proven a challenge, in large part due to the vitriol aimed at female politicians.
“Women who have made it, who have succeeded, who have gotten elected, are now two years into it and wondering: ‘Is this really what I signed up for?’ because of the nastiness, because of the negativity,” he said.
He pointed to the case of Iqra Khalid, a Toronto-area Liberal MP who introduced a private member’s motion condemning Islamophobia and “ended up experiencing death threats and a level of online violence and commentary and viral videos against her that were quite terrifying.”
Khalid went through a “very difficult time” and questioned whether she wanted to keep her seat, he said.
Trudeau said it is his goal to tackle the “hidden attitudes” that lead to inequity, but stressed that the matter won’t be resolved during his tenure — rather, it will take generations.
Actor and activist Angelina Jolie also addressed the conference.
Jolie said that with so many humanitarian crises in the world, it’s up to everyone to educate himself or herself and continue pushing for democracy and human rights.
“There’s just so much for all of us to do. And the first and foremost is we have to just get the best education. … With all that’s accessible to us, sometimes we get completely overwhelmed and we don’t know what to believe and what to do, so I’m just trying to listen to other women, I’m trying to lend my voice where possible,” Jolie told the summit in an afternoon panel.
“We all need to do, I think, even more than we’ve ever done because we’re at a very dark time.”
The filmmaker and special envoy for the United Nations refugee agency was in Toronto to promote First They Killed My Father, a movie about the Khmer Rouge era in Cambodia, which was to have its Canadian première Monday night at the Toronto International Film Festival.